


One Lifetime Later

by Inrainbowz



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Developing Relationship, Episode: s03e05 A Life in the Day, Family Feels, Fluff and Angst, Growing Old Together, Minor Character Death, Multi, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-29 23:05:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13937346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inrainbowz/pseuds/Inrainbowz
Summary: "You should know that we lead full, good lives."Between working on the mosaic, falling in love and raising a child, the years pass.





	One Lifetime Later

**Author's Note:**

> I got into the Magicians because of this ship and liked it well enough. Season 2 was a huge disappointment, generally speaking, and I almost gave up on it. Only scenes from that episode kept me going haha, and well, I'm glad I did. Season 3 is The Shit, I love them all. And I had too many feels not to write about it, so here we go. Enjoy!

The tiles are heavy and dry to the skin – the first thing Eliot wishes for once they get started on the mosaic is a moisturizing hand lotion. Some tiles have cutting edges, even if they don’t seem to be breakable or even damageable, thank gods. Or, well. Maybe not.

He lets Quentin do his calculations because the result is the same – a combination to try. Whether there’s a reason, a pattern, or if it’s just random motifs, it doesn’t matter. They won’t be expected to turn in a five-page essay about why exactly this particular design worked and how it answered to the riddle, if they ever find it.

At least he hopes they won’t, but what does he know really.

What is even supposed to be ”the beauty of all life”? What pretentious twat decided that it could be represented by a bunch of colored squares on the ground?

Nothing happens after Quentin is done with his first try – of course, it’s not going to be so simple – so they mark it down and try again.

.

It’s tiring but actually kind of fun, when they manage to free their mind of the crushing burden of the absolute necessity to finish this, both to complete the quest and to be able to go home. They tease each other and take turns arranging and supervising the mosaic. A few days pass. They keep failing.

Quentin wonders if the mosaic was placed there next to the cottage, if the cottage came after when it appeared clear that this would take far longer than anyone had foreseen, or if they were both build at the same time by whatever sadistic being who came up with that idea. It’s small and dusty but it’s a sturdy house, with a large, comfy bed, a small kitchen full of mismatched cutlery and an old stove they need all their brain power and several hours to figure out, before remembering that they do have magic here. Strange how fast they adapted to forego it, but they both remember the first few weeks after it was sucked out of their world, how everyone would wave their hand and chant without thinking, and how heartbroken and crestfallen they would look when they remembered that “oh, yeah, that’s right”. They had quickly rooted those habits out.

They come back just as fast. They have magic there, even if they use it in the most mundane ways. To heat and light the house at night, conjure water for the bath and the dishes, clean around. At first, they mostly buy food to the passing merchants and locals, but they quickly run out of things to exchange, so they start hunting on their own. It’s a bit tricky with the whole “some animals are talking and sentient and some are not” thing, but they learn. It's been a few months already, they keep saying they shouldn't count the days and keep doing it anyway, and Eliot, losing that battle against himself eventually after a sad night of drinking and remembering, starts making plans for them to grow some vegetables and fruits on their own.

Thinking about it, it was impossible they would ever give up on solving the mosaic.

Of course they talk about it, quite often. Some days are more frustrating and despairing than others – especially when it rains so heavily they can’t see two feet away and they’re stuck in the cottage and into each other’s hair. Or on days when they inexplicably put a lot of faith in one of their designs, because it looks somehow better, more promising than the others, and the disappointment is that much stronger when nothing happens once the last tile is put into place.

On those days they talk about giving up. Going back, leaving. Sometimes they are so frustrated and tired it feels like it would take just a small push, just both of them agreeing at the same time, for them to act on it. But it never comes, and they never do. The arguments are always the same – how can they, after all this time? It gets stronger as the weeks turn into months. Besides, they need that key anyway. They fight and threaten to leave, but in the end they simply can’t. Quitting isn’t an option.

Would they even know how to go back?

There is something else of course, something darker. They’re nearing a year in that place, but they have no idea how time actually passed for the rest of the universes. For their friends. What is happening right now, in their timeline, in their own world? Maybe they all moved on or maybe they’re all dead. Maybe they found another way and forgot all about Quentin and Eliot who disappeared one day without a trace and never returned.

Facing that truth without even a key to show for it is too frightening.

So, they stay.

.

Quentin kisses Eliot on their one-year anniversary. They’ve been living together for a year and he can’t remember any of the reasons why they shouldn’t do that. So they do. Eliot kisses him back, he looks beautiful, pleased and content, and shit, they might as well make the most of it, right? Who knows how much longer they’ll be stuck here? Eliot says they can save the freaks out and emotional talks for later, when they’re back. Back to the real world, to their real life. This is just an interlude, it doesn’t really count. So, in a strange twist of fate, they are more free than they ever were.

Some times after that they finally sell their earth clothes at the nearest town’s market and adopt the local fashion. Eliot’s garden is going well, and when this would have filled him with dread in other circumstances, all he can feel is pride, for his little patch of land, for the things he grows to sustain himself and his companion. They make enough that they can sell some and furnish their cottage and wardrobe a bit. They stopped having these reflections that you have when you’re not supposed to stay in a place for long. The sense that it’s not worth putting too much effort into it, settling in properly, because you’ll be leaving soon. They stop, once they truly come to term with the possibility that they may very well stay there longer than any other places they ever lived in. It’s around their second anniversary, because on the first, Eliot said it was their first and last year there. On the second, he says nothing at all.

It’s strange how well they adjust to that world, that life. They don’t have much to do, and all of it is trivial, mundane, things that only concern themselves. No life or death situation, no decision making that will affect an entire country, an entire world. All they have to do is tend to their house, life, each other, and work on the mosaic. They have a routine too. They get on each other’s nerves quickly when they spend too much time together on the puzzle, so more and more they split – one damaging his hands on the tiles, the other cooking, cleaning, gardening, sewing. Their hands which are callous now, rough, workers hands, thick and strong.

In the beginning, they feel guilty about doing anything other than focusing on the mosaic, even eating or sleeping. It fades. The mosaic is just another one of their daily task. The record book fills slowly with all their attempts.

.

They think they’ll miss technology, the modern world, but they don’t, not really. Because magic provides here. They can use it to do absolutely everything. They learn and invent spells for everything, and they don’t need anything else.

“You know how we always gave shit to the wizards in Harry Potter, because like, they still go with candles and medieval and shit? But I get it now. When you think about it, why would they bother with any of it, electricity, modern stuff, when magic can do anything, and more?”

.

“Peaches and plums?”

She’s new. They’ve become acquainted with most of the people walking the woods, sometimes invite merchants and their family or travelers to dinner, when they get sick of being their only company. She’s beautiful and smiling. Quentin is smitten.

It has to do with magic, of course. It has to. How life seems so simple. How little they think of their friends, of home. How it never crosses their mind to cheat their way out of it. To go to the castle consult books on the matter, to find the White Lady so that she can solve the mosaic for them, to try all the things they would normally try, where they the two desperate earth boys that stumbled upon the puzzle a few years ago.

They don’t because they feel deep down that this is not what that quest is about, but also, maybe, because they simply don’t want to. They’re happy here. They are. They have something they never thought they would get. They have peace and quiet, love, a simple purpose, all they need. Maybe it’s selfish of them. But they can’t leave anyway, so what harm is there in being content with it?

So Quentin befriends her, and more after she leaves that cheating prick, and he doesn’t think about Alice and Julia and his usual doubts and angst. Eliot likes her well enough, which is huge, coming from him. He has that issue, with women, and Quentin secretly believes he just can’t forgive any of them for not being Margo Hansen. She’s the one he misses the most, the only thing that makes him sigh with melancholy, forlorn and bitter, on days when life seems grim and dull.

But he likes Arielle. She’s nice and bright, funny and caustic in her humor and anger.

So they welcome her in their bed, which seems suspiciously bigger all of the sudden. At first she’s in and out, but slowly, she carves herself a spot in the cottage, and soon enough she lives right there with them. They plant peach and plum trees. They explai the mosaic, vaguely, and whether she believes them or not, she takes to bringing them fruit juices and collation when they get lost in it.

.

They don’t get married. Not by the Fillorian laws anyway. When Quentin breaches the subject, Arielle shrugs, reminding him that Fillorian weddings can’t be anything but exclusive. She points at Eliot, who tries to remove himself from the equation, saying that they should do what makes them happy. Strangely enough, that’s all the argument they need. Quentin is happy with both of them and Arielle is happy when her boys are. So it is settled. From what she tells them, it’s a common enough occurrence in Fillory. Large households with various couples and children, who love and support each other, all kinds of arrangements and orientations.

“Oh! Bisexual! Because you have a man and woman, right?”

They laugh and move on, settling in that arrangement for good.

She gets pregnant – they’re beyond elated. Eliot can’t help but think about Fen. Poor Fen who tried so hard, who made the best of a situation she was stuck in just as much as he was. He wishes he had been able to love her sometimes, like she loved him. He wishes he had been better about that child they had produced together, who was innocent to their faults and anguish.

This is very different this time around. It’s the first time since they got here that the mosaic shifts into the background – in that they spend less than seven hours a day on it for some time. Arielle doesn’t want her regulars to run out of peaches and plums, so she keeps doing her tours as long as she can, and then rob the boys into picking it up for her.

“I have a clientele! It’s important that I remain reliable for them!”

Important. That’s what important, in their life. Keeping the neighbors – the closest of whom live a half an hour walk away – supplied with their usual fruits. They agree to take turns in taking on her business, warning the people concerned that they might miss a few, because it’s important indeed.

The nurse in town visits often in the last few weeks before Arielle is due, and is prepared when Eliot barged into her house in the middle of the night, soaking wet and entirely panicking, to warn her that Arielle has gone into labor. Quentin and Eliot pace the room in every possible way before they finally hear the blessed sound of a newborn crying their heart out.

It’s a beautiful little boy. They call him Rupert, and life is perfect.

.

Eliot keeps his distance at first. Despite the imperious urge to look after the child, hold him, feed him, and never keeping his eyes off him ever – and strange, terrible feats of anxiety when he's certain that a fairy is going to come in and take him away – Rupert is not his. He has two loving parents that make a fine job of caring for him, and he has no place in this.

Well, that is until Arielle tears him a new one because he’s not doing his part and it upsets Rupert because he thinks Eliot doesn’t love him.

“He needs you too.”

It’s a very embarrassing moment. There is a lot of crying as Eliot tries and mostly fails to put his feelings into words and make her understand how hard this is, how scared and intruding he feels. She accepted their tales of fucked up timelines and different worlds the same way she accepted their obsession with the mosaic – if they believe it’s true, let’s say it is and work with that. She’s also way more perceptive and in touch with her emotions than her boys are and will ever be, and they’re very lucky to have her. Maybe they wouldn’t have made it so far without her to get them out of their own heads.

So she reassures him. She tells him that they’re all in this together, all three of them, that Quentin and her are lucky indeed to have a third parent in tow, that Rupert is lucky too. It’s the most open and honest they have ever been with each other and they come out of it with a better understanding of their relationship and their place in that little world of theirs.

She tells everything to Quentin, of course she does, and in the evening he holds Eliot tight and whispers words of love and devotion into his ear until the older boy warns him he’s about to die of embarrassment. Eliot sleeps by the baby’s side, leaving the bed to the couple, and he can finally rest.

.

They don’t know the words “chronic depression” in Fillory. The doctor Quentin consults in town talks of mood swings, something they believe affects mostly women. He has some advice on herbs to put in his tea and relaxing exercises, so really, in the end, it’s on his two partners that rest the burden of his damaged mental health.

He does his hardest, and he is happy, but there are still days when he can’t get out of bed. The fact that he is that happy indeed is an even worse blow because he can’t figure out what is wrong with him. But somehow, it’s the first time he truly believes his depression to be a thing totally out of his control, something his various therapist had tried to convince him of for years. Because life is good here, and still he feels sucked into the void sometimes, feels like everything is dark and hopeless, and not worth all the efforts. And he knows it’s not true, because he has Arielle and Eliot, whom he loves and who love him, and they have Rupert, who is probably the meaning of life itself.

And they are counting on him.

So when he feels himself spiraling down, he talks to them instead of keeping it to himself. They help, mostly by reminding him that it’s fine, that he shouldn’t beat himself up over it, that they’re a family and family means support, means that he’s not alone in this. It’s frustrating for all of them but they make it through together. He never stops being frustrated about his fucked up brain, but he learns to function with it, and to rely on others when he can’t.

And when needed he’s the one to soothe Eliot’s insecurities, his fears of being as terrible a father as his own father was, his feelings of being a burden they would be better off without, his guilt over the kingdom, the people and the friends he abandoned. He comforts Arielle too, who couldn’t stay put and learn the family business like her parents and siblings wanted her to. Who slammed the door and didn’t look back, and who can never introduce her son to the rest of her family. She starts writing to them on his lover’s urges, and he posts it for her because she doesn’t feel brave enough.

They save each other, over and over again.

.

They never really get a routine back as Rupert grows older, but it’s fine. They bend their life around their small wonder, watching and documenting every first time. It’s been a long time since Eliot longed for modern technology – he wishes he could record everything, take thousands of pictures, make sure none of it ever fades. Instead, well, they save money for months to have a family portrait painted by an artist in town, and otherwise, it’s Quentin who writes and draws, documents their life in between designs for the puzzle. Rupert is curious and adventurous, but without talking about it, Quentin and Eliot keep him at a safe distance from the mosaic, diverting his attention and answering vaguely to his questions when he gets too interested in it. They don’t want to pass it onto him – the puzzle is their burden, and they'll spare him from it if they can.

They experience a level of intimacy they never even thought was possible. It’s not painful, that love, it’s not heartbreaking, not a constant fight. It’s steady and slow, kisses in the morning, light hugs in passing, hands brushing, casual smiles. Unhurried and calm, because they know it’s real, and strong, it’s not going anywhere.

Someday when the boy is barely five, Arielle starts to complain of painful headaches that she can’t function through. What they dismiss for a cold leaves her bedridden and weak and after a few days, they call for the nurse.

There is nothing to do. They talk about going to the River to heal her, but the nurse tells them with a forlorn expression that she won’t survive the trip. They despair for a few more days, before she calls them to the bed, tells them to be good and take care of Rupert, and gives her last breath, a smile and an apology on his lips.

They bury her at the edge of the clearing, cover her grave with flowers, and they mourn. Quentin takes it upon himself to keep the peaches and plums coming for Arielle’s regulars, just the time to tell everybody. They stop growing so many of them after that, but they still keep one tree of each and build the certitude that they’ll always feel this sense of loss when biting into the fruits.

Quentin throws himself into the mosaic with renewed vigor. He barely sleeps or eats and has troubles looking at and talking to Eliot and Rupert, until one day the older man sits him down and forces him to confide, to let go. Quentin cries and cries as Eliot holds him tightly, until he falls asleep, exhausted, curled protectively around Rupert’s sleeping form. Things slowly get better after that. Rupert is still young and it takes him a long time to understand that his mother is never coming back, but he grows up happy and loved still, so they feel they didn’t fail her too badly.

It takes time though, to relearn how to live without her. To fill the void she left behind. They never truly do.

.

One day, when Rupert is old enough to go to school in the village and they found themselves sucked into the mosaic again, Quentin expresses an idea that has been plaguing him for months.

“Maybe the key to the Quest is testing all of them. All the possibilities.”

They get into a fight, because they’re scared. Are they supposed to sacrifice generations of their family to it? Bind their children and their children’s children to the place until one of them complete it all, hundreds of years in the future? It’s just too dreadful a prospect, too terrible to imagine. So they yell, they rage, they blame, they do their best to be as hurtful as possible, until Quentin storms off and disappears into the woods. Eliot lies to Rupert about where he’s gone and spends the night doing and redoing the puzzle, scraping three new designs in the notebook that are blurred by his tears.

Quentin finds him right there in the morning, asleep on the half-finished puzzle. He lays by his sides on those dreadful tiles they both hate and love and they cling to each other desperately.

“We have to keep going.”

“I know, I know.”

“Don’t leave me alone here.”

“I won’t. Never.”

.

Age is starting to take its toll. Aching back and joints, restless sleep, fuzzy memory. They get slower at everything they do but it almost feels like a conscious choice. They are sure now that the mosaic can’t actually be solved. There is a catch, a trick, something that will seem obvious once it’s revealed but that is obscure right now. They know it, deep down in their bones, but they keep trying regardless. They have to, what else can they do? They have to keep trying, even if it becomes harder and harder to stay bent over the thing all day, to move the tiles around time and time again, on top of their other chores. Their hands are stiff and uncooperative, but still, they keep trying.

Rupert is growing up, inevitably. They’re glad he takes an interest in the vastness of the world – they don’t wish their fate on him. It still a hard blow, when he expresses his will to go study in the capital. He wants to become a historian, to know the kingdom inside and out, and to be able to contribute to it if he can. Rupert knows about his dads’ story, but to him they are just that – stories. He hopes to understand though, to learn more. To help, maybe.

They see him off on a sunny day. He’s handsome, with his new clothes and determined expression, a young, confident young man contrasting with his greying, aging fathers. He’s sad, but he’s so eager to start on that new journey that he can’t keep still. They do their best not to hold him back too long.

He hugs Quentin tightly, sees Eliot backing down, not feeling strong enough maybe, or still plagued with that weird sense of inadequacy he got sometimes, a weakness Rupert, at his worse teenage self, had taken advantage. “You’re not my father”. As if. He respects his reserve though, even if it hurts.

He promises to visit. They both think of their own parents and them making the same promises, an eternity ago. How they never kept it, never even intended to.

But their son does. Because he’s better than they ever were and, as astonishing as it sounds, they were better parents too. He visits a couple of times a year. Eventually he brings a girl, later, grandchildren. They can’t make the trip as often as they want with small kids and growing responsibilities, and his parents know he doesn’t understand why they don’t come. Why they even stay there at the cottage, where life is getting more complicated the older they get. But Rupert has learned a lot, about magic, quests, legends and fate. So he gets it, sort of. He sends money their way so that they don’t have to exhaust themselves selling their meager harvest to make a living, and he aches for them, even if he never says anything.

.

They are so old now, none of their friends would recognize them. Not that Eliot and Quentin would either – mostly because they don’t really remember their faces. They still work on the mosaic though, painstakingly, obsessively. They don’t talk much anymore, don’t do much of anything else. The people from the village and the nearby farms come to check up on them, bring them some food and help around the cottage, and they are the children and grandchildren of the ones they met when they arrived, who are also old or dead already. Their magic becomes fizzling and unfocused. Their energy slowly fades away.

And then, Quentin turns to Eliot sitting in his favorite chairs, and that’s it.

They had been bickering about something or another before he fell silent. Quentin assumed he had fallen asleep, as he tended to do at any and odd times lately. But Eliot is not sleeping.

He’s gone.

Quentin is alone.

The pain is distant, subdued. He doesn’t think about what he’s going to do next, about what this means, about anything. Just that he has to bury his beloved companion.

There are still flowers on Arielle’s grave and he starts digging a few feet away, refusing to think about how difficult that’s going to be, if he’ll even be able to go through with it, with how painful and weak his whole body is.

But it’s not a problem, because his shovel hits something hard right away.

It’s a tile. A golden tile.

Quentin is not angry or relieved. He not happy, nor sad. Not about that anyway. What does he care about the tiles really, with Eliot gone and his own end so close?

Well, he’s still not going to waste it.

He places the tile in the dead center of the mosaic. The key appears.

It’s so obvious. So clever. It’s exactly as it should be. Here it is, the beauty of all life. The only reason it’s meaningful. Because it ends. And the beauty is there, in the hundreds of pages they filled with their own ideas of it, in the times they spent here, the life they built, the love they shared. The beauty of life is life itself. Life and death, nurtured until the very end.

He has the key. He’s done.

Before he can even think “what now?”, Jane Chapman comes out of the woods.

He held on distantly to the knowledge that they were the ones to solve it for her, but he never stopped to think about what that would mean. She needs the key and his first reflex is to send her to hell. They lived for this key. They died for it. How could he give it to her? How could she deserve it, know its true worth?

But she shows him her watch and of course.

Of course, of course, of course.

It’s time. That’s the key. That’s the answer. A lifetime. And it doesn’t make sense but the truth is still as it is – they were the ones to give her the means to launch the time loop. They had lived an entire life before the story even began. He has to give it to her so that this story can happen, so that they… exist. He doesn’t dare think about not doing it. It’s too big for him to fathom, especially with how confused and tired his mind is.

She thanks him and leaves, and he’s alone, for good.

Still, he doesn’t get to think. His own time is running out. He has to make arrangements so that their friends can find the key in their original timeline, has to warn Margo, try to explain to her, to apologize. For what? For abandoning her, them? Or for the chance they were given, their insolent luck, for the life they were allowed to live, something none of them thought they would ever get? He can’t explain it all in a letter anyway. His mind conjures the memory of a rabbit messenger, just before they stepped foot through the clock, about Margo’s wedding. He clings to that even if he’s not convinced it’s real. It was in another life.

He tasks their son with this mission. Their son and his family, their grandchildren. When Margo receives this, it will come from Eliot and Quentin's descendants, family. How crazy is that.

He knows he won’t live long enough to see his son again. His last strengths go to giving Eliot a proper burial, and then he lies on the ground between the two of them, Eliot and Arielle, surrounded by flowers, and the smell of ripe fruit, of their home, the sound of the wind in the trees and the sun shining light on their little clearing, carry him to sleep.

.

Margo stops them. They don’t step through the clock.

.

And yet.

.

“Peaches and plums.”

“Peaches and plums, peaches and plums, peaches and plums.”

They can still feel it. The scent, the taste, and the sadness it carries. Rupert’s smiling face. Late nights watching the stars. The dust of the tiles drying the skin of their hands.

All that time. The love, the peace. The beauty. The life. All of it.

“I got so old.”

Aching joints. Blank mind. Decades-old habits.

“You died.”

The sorrow. The loneliness. But something that was soft, acceptable. Natural. Without pain or violence, without tragedy.

Without regrets.

“You had a wife.”

So simple, so pure. Average, mundane. Perfect.

“We had a family.”

Rupert. Arielle. Eliot and Quentin. Their cottage, their garden.

A life, in a day.

They reach out and tangle their fingers together, a casual touch of comfort, something they have done a thousand times. Something they have never done at all.

They hold on as tight as they can.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm excited for the end of the season. And I love Eliot and Margo to death. And Quentin, well, he can stay I guess. He's good when he cares about his friends.
> 
> You can find me on my [tumblr for writing](http://inrainprose.tumblr.com) or my [tumblr for general nonsense](http://inrainbowz.tumblr.com). Thank you for reading, don't forget to give feedback! Love, bye.


End file.
